1. Jirayr Hamparzoom Zorthian was an Armenian American artist.
13 Facts About Jirayr Zorthian
1. 2.
Jirayr Zorthian earned a Master of Fine Arts at Yale University and studied art in Italy in the 1930s.
3.
Jirayr Zorthian is known among physicists for his friendship with Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winning physicist.
4.
Jirayr Zorthian's teaching inspired Feynman to take up drawing, a pastime he continued for the rest of his life.
5.
Jirayr Zorthian, who earned his own kaleidoscopic descriptives as the last bohemian, a rustic latter-day Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or an ongoing work of performance art, died on January 6,2004, of congestive heart failure.
6.
Jirayr Zorthian joined the nymphs in dancing to the pipes of a cavorting Pan garbed in furry goat leggings.
7.
July 15,1952, Jirayr Zorthian hosted a legendary party on his ranch, where Charlie Parker played, a woman performed a strip tease atop a rocking horse, and other riled-up guests tore their clothes off.
8.
Jirayr Zorthian called the ranch The Center for Research and Development with an Emphasis on Aesthetics, and fashioned rental houses out of discarded items including telephone poles and railroad ties.
9.
Jirayr Zorthian built rock walls, towers, inlaid bridges and walkways.
10.
Jirayr Zorthian painted in a studio and bred horses for his horse ring.
11.
Jirayr Zorthian was equally at home attending posh art events in a tuxedo as in digging through restaurant trash cans for recyclable objects.
12.
Jirayr Zorthian chaired the Pasadena Art Fair in 1954 and 1955 and staged a show of his work at what was then the Pasadena Art Museum in 1953.
13.
The archive containing the majority of Jirayr Zorthian's artwork burned down.